Hydrogen OS first public preview release

[f2]

Some of you know Hydrogen OS through screenshots I'm posting in this forum.
The OS is far from complete and is constantly evolving. However, I decided to make
a preview version of Hydrogen OS available for the public.



Known bugs and limitations:
» this is only a preview release for testing purpose only.
» windows can't be maximized/resized yet.
» some bugs exists when windows are moved.
» when a window is minimized, the restore button "+" doesn't work.

I strongly recommend the use of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 or VMWare Workstation for testing Hydrogen OS.

Feel free to post here your opinions, ideas, etc..
Do not forget to visit my website for new releases and screenshots.

Best regards,
Tommy

[tera4d]

Tommy i tested out your OS in virtual pc 2007
And it ran great!
The only problem(s) i discovered where that if you drag the window to fast it gets deselected.
And i could not minimze the windows.
For the rest it ran without a problem.
This project looks promising and i will keep an eye out for it.
I wish you good luck with it.

-Tera4D

[NickJohnson]

I tried it out in VirtualBox 2.2.2 under Linux, and it works okay, albeit slowly. Things look pretty nice and nothing crashes - pretty good so far. Is the graphical shell in usermode or kernelmode, and can you execute actual programs yet?

[Troy Martin]

Works amazing in Virtual PC 2007, as tera4d said. Congratz on the great tech demo, I can't wait to see more

If you ever write a framework for applications and UI "widgets", I'll be glad to try my hand at writing some test apps for you!

[f2]

@tera4d

And i could not minimze the windows.

That's true. For example, the Digital Clock window doesn't minimize, unlike other windows.

@NickJohnson

I tried it out in VirtualBox 2.2.2 under Linux, and it works okay, albeit slowly.

Check if your computer supports hardware virtualization and if this feature is used by VirtualBox.

Things look pretty nice and nothing crashes - pretty good so far. Is the graphical shell in usermode or kernelmode, and can you execute actual programs yet?

Hydrogen OS doesn't support yet paging, memory managment or multitasking. It runs in kernel mode and can't execute programs. These features will be implemented for the next releases. Just be patient...

[Troy Martin]

Ah, crap. Tested on VirtualBox 3.0.0, loading froze at the splash screen, and VBox went into Guru Meditation. The logs, they really don't tell you anything unless you're the guy/gal that wrote VBox in the first place...

[f2]

Ah, crap. Tested on VirtualBox 3.0.0, loading froze at the splash screen, and VBox went into Guru Meditation. The logs, they really don't tell you anything unless you're the guy/gal that wrote VBox in the first place...

Thanks for reporting, I will check it out.

[gravaera]

In bochs (v2.3.7) the mouse works fine, but the whole UI is pretty slow. I'm not saying this as a complaint, though. This is great work.

In qemu (v0.10.0) everything is really fast, but the OS doesn't seem to sense my mouse's button clicks. The mouse itself is detected, but when I click there is no response. But since the mouse was working in bochs, it means the driver is okay. Qemu was at fault there.

I don't have a floppy drive, and wasn't feeling like burning a CD, and my Bios doesn't support Flash drive booting, so I couldn't let your OS onto my pc by booting it. Would have liked to, in order to see how the whole thing worked overall.

Great work. I believe that VESA provides a method of probing the hardware device for its 'preferred' resolution. That way you could probably attempt to probe the user's monitor instead of having such a large screen mode set as the default.

Just a suggestion.

All the best
gravaera

[f2]

In qemu (v0.10.0) everything is really fast, but the OS doesn't seem to sense my mouse's button clicks. The mouse itself is detected, but when I click there is no response. But since the mouse was working in bochs, it means the driver is okay. Qemu was at fault there.

This problem is specific to QEmu. I never use QEmu, this problem will never be resolved.

[NickJohnson]

Things look pretty nice and nothing crashes - pretty good so far. Is the graphical shell in usermode or kernelmode, and can you execute actual programs yet?

Hydrogen OS doesn't support yet paging, memory managment or multitasking. It runs in kernel mode and can't execute programs. These features will be implemented for the next releases. Just be patient...

I just wanted to get a better picture of how far along you are. Some people start at the GUI and work down, while others start with threading and IPC and work up. If you had both, I would be seriously impressed.

In qemu (v0.10.0) everything is really fast, but the OS doesn't seem to sense my mouse's button clicks. The mouse itself is detected, but when I click there is no response. But since the mouse was working in bochs, it means the driver is okay. Qemu was at fault there.

This problem is specific to QEmu. I never use QEmu, this problem will never be resolved.

You probably will have to address stuff like this eventually, because real hardware is even more unpredictable than the various VMs. Unless you only want to run your OS under vPC forever .

[Combuster]

But since the mouse was working in bochs, it means the driver is okay. Qemu was at fault there.

No, it means the mouse driver is broken, and that some other dependency makes it work in some cases.

[Creature]

But since the mouse was working in bochs, it means the driver is okay. Qemu was at fault there.

No, it means the mouse driver is broken, and that some other dependency makes it work in some cases.

I'll have to agree on this. Even though it IS possible the emulator is at fault, I doubt something pretty mature (let's just call it that) like QEMU has a bugged out mouse driver (which is used regularely, and would most likely already have been reported and resolved, UNLESS it's a bug in a release client or some major code revision).

[-m32]

Ah, crap. Tested on VirtualBox 3.0.0, loading froze at the splash screen, and VBox went into Guru Meditation. The logs, they really don't tell you anything unless you're the guy/gal that wrote VBox in the first place...

Yep, doesn't work on VirtualBox 3.0.2 either. Sits at the splash-screen...

[-m32]

Yep, doesn't work on VirtualBox 3.0.2 either. Sits at the splash-screen...

Seems that it only has trouble when you try to boot with 16 million colours...

And, your mouse driver definitely needs some work. It's impossible to click on "Control Panel", every time I try to move the mouse up, it shoots to the right, or the bottom of the screen

[f2]

Yep, doesn't work on VirtualBox 3.0.2 either. Sits at the splash-screen...

Works fine on VirtualBox 3.0.4, but it is very slow.
Moreover, when I start Virtual PC 2007 after VirtualBox 3.0.4, Windows 7 crashes...

Seems that it only has trouble when you try to boot with 16 million colours...

i have no problem with 16 million colours modes.

And, your mouse driver definitely needs some work. It's impossible to click on "Control Panel", every time I try to move the mouse up, it shoots to the right, or the bottom of the screen

That's right! I'm trying to correct this problem.